Shouldn’t Liberals Be Voting For Conservatives?

September 30, 2012

The one constant in life seems to be that the implementation of a poorly thought out program aimed at redistributing wealth almost invariably ends up making everyone poorer. History is replete with examples of the negative consequences associated with even the most well-meaning attempts at redistributing the wealth. The reason that these efforts don’t generally turn out well may lie in the definition of the word itself.

Redistribution implies a zero sum game where a finite amount of wealth is redistributed among the members of the defined group. Thomas Sowell succinctly addresses this point in his excellent article on Townhall.com entitled “The Fallacy of Redistribution” where he states, and I quote:

You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.

He goes on to make a number of other good points primarily aimed at showing how the producers of wealth tend to either leave entirely or produce less than had previously been the case. One important point which he did not make clear is that both the accumulated wealth targeted to be redistributed as well as the means to produce such wealth are often destroyed in the process of attempting to redistribute it. This ends up disproportionately hurting the very people advocates of the process claim it is designed to help.

Common sense would dictate that those from whom the wealth is to be stripped are not going to offer it up willingly. Those who can take their wealth with them will surely do so, but those who can’t, or won’t, will stand and fight. The most likely result stemming from any attempt to seize their wealth, while at the same time offering little, if any, compensation in return, is a cycle of violence which ends up with all those concerned being all the poorer for making the effort.

When one understands how damaging enforced redistribution can be, the moral bankruptcy of the position articulated by the President, and his supporters from the left, becomes obvious. The true meaning of his various pronouncements, which all boil down to “we’re all in it together”, should be understood within the context of an ideology completely counter to the American experience. Sure, as Americans, we are assumed to share certain values and expected to each do our “fair share”, but this should not be seen as supporting either class warfare or the underlying ideology of socialism.

The point is that real difference exist between the solutions offered by the two Presidential candidates. On the left, the President offers up a solution of taking from the rich to give to the poor, while on the right Presidential candidate Romney suggests that the solution is to create more wealth for every citizen of this nation. The reason I ask whether liberals might want to consider voting conservative is that they might want to consider what happens after they, metaphorically speaking, burn the means of production down.